As scholars compare President Barack Obama to Franklin D. Roosevelt, a timely new biography by former Washington Post reporter Kirstin Downey reminds us that history often overlooks those who do the work without seeking the limelight.

Downey artfully illustrates this phenomenon in “The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience.”

Roosevelt and his famous wife, Eleanor, receive most of the credit — or blame, depending on your point of view — for the New Deal, but Perkins helped draft, pass and enact many of its most enduring components.

Pivotal role

On a chilly February night in 1933, Downey writes in the prologue, Roosevelt met with Perkins to offer her the job of labor secretary.

It was a controversial choice. The good old boys in the labor unions overwhelmingly opposed the selection of a woman.

Perkins had her doubts, too.

She vowed not to accept the offer unless Roosevelt agreed to what was at the time a revolutionary agenda: 40-hour workweek, minimum wage, unemployment compensation, a ban on child labor, Social Security and health insurance.

Roosevelt agreed to everything on Perkins’ list.

“It was a job she had prepared for all her life,” Downey wrote. “She had changed her name, her appearance, even her age to make herself a more effective labor advocate.”

Downey’s book is a highly satisfactory slice of American history.

It is also a poignant portrait of Perkins’ private struggles with a mentally ill husband and daughter while simultaneously carrying out an ambitious policy agenda in the male-dominated world of politics.

That Perkins’ legacy all but disappeared is due, in part, to her own efforts to downplay her role as well as the actions of her daughter, who refused access to some of her mother’s remaining papers.

Perkins, who took copious notes on male behavior, had determined that men were less threatened by woman who resembled their mothers. She dressed in matronly clothing and her trademark tri-cornered hat. She carefully moderated her speech and tone to her advantage in her predominately male work environment. (Her male Cabinet counterparts even passed notes about her during meetings.)

Despite Perkins’ best efforts to remain beneath notice, Downey’s research provides meaty details of a woman that so few have heard about even as we reap the benefits of her efforts.

Birth of a conscience

Born Fannie Perkins in 1880, she grew up as a middle-class shopkeeper’s daughter in a conservative Massachusetts town. But the smart and articulate girl was deeply influenced by the growing gap between the rich and the poor.

Her open-minded father encouraged his intelligent daughter and sent her to Mount Holyoke, the women’s college. There, she was inspired to pursue a life of public service rather than become a pampered society wife.

After several teaching jobs and a decision to change her name to the more sedate Frances, Perkins witnessed the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York in 1911, in which 146 people, mostly girls crammed elbow-to-elbow in a crowded factory, died in a massive firetrap.

It ignited Perkins’ passion to improve the working conditions of Americans. She would later work to pass mandatory fire safety codes such as fire escapes and maximum occupancy codes.

Perkins never slaved over a sewing machine in a sweatshop, but she was a working woman nonetheless.

A private look

Downey offers readers a unique look into the private side of Perkins, chief breadwinner at a time when middle- and upper-class women were expected to care for home and hearth.

But Perkins’ husband was mentally ill most of their married life. He often required expensive institutional care and could not financially support her and their daughter.

Other fascinating revelations revolve around Perkins’ complicated and lengthy relationship with Roosevelt, a man she clearly admired but viewed as easily manipulated by others.

Downey also details the dark days when Perkins’ enemies sought to impeach her amid allegations that she failed to deport a San Francisco labor leader linked to Communism.

When Perkins left the Cabinet after Roosevelt’s death, she returned to teaching. She was a college professor until her death in 1965 at age 85.

Throughout her life, Perkins never sought public recognition and rejected offers to write her memoir. If she were still alive, she might not entirely approve of Downey’s frank assessment of her successes and failings.

But Downey’s book is, like Perkins’ life, a great public service to American workers, to women and history.

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